


Remain Yourself

by darthpumpkinspice



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Klingon Ash, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-05
Updated: 2018-02-05
Packaged: 2019-03-13 20:05:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13578000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darthpumpkinspice/pseuds/darthpumpkinspice
Summary: Post episode 1x13, Ash is alone in the medbay, only to be confronted by someone he thought was gone.





	Remain Yourself

**Author's Note:**

> yeaaa i mostly wanted Lorca/Ash to interact again. is he a ghost? a hallucination? who knows! anyway, hope ya'll enjoy! :D

He’s been left alone for the past twelve hours. His “condition” is effectively beyond the reach of the medics, and his normalized brainwaves have absolved them of any responsibility to treat him further. Apparently, Dr. Culber was much beloved among his peers; Ash doubts they have any desire to administer more than the bare minimum of medical aid.

As for the guards, there have been more _pressing_ issues facing the _Discovery_ lately. He knows he’s being closely monitored on cameras, and he wouldn’t be surprised if there was a petty officer outside the door, phaser in hand.

But all in all, the consensus is that he’s Ash Tyler again- only an enemy of the Federation on technicality, now. And so he finds himself with his hands chained together, completely alone.  

Except, of course, for the ghost sitting on the edge of his bed- and the knowledge that he has gone mad.

The ghost is just how he remembers him- handsome face marred by the slash of a cruel smile, and wearing the expression of a chess master ten moves ahead and eyeing his opponent’s king like it already belongs to him.

Tyler feels a bead of sweat drip down his brow. L’Rell must’ve broken him, when she cut away at his brain. She’s stolen his sanity along with his body, mind, and soul.

He refocuses. The temptation to say ‘captain’ is almost too great, as is the other urge- an insult in a language that glitters faintly on the edge of his subconscious, and lingers in the phantom weight of harsh consonants and heavy sounds on his tongue. His voice catches in his throat, torn between two words, two accents, two beings. In the end, he says nothing at all.

Lorca is smirking, and an unpleasant chill races down Tyler’s spine as he suddenly registers that truly, this man is a stranger to him. Stripped of his thin veneer of honor and morality, Lorca radiates a new, unfamiliar energy. It’s difficult to reconcile the man before him with the Captain he served under, and the irony of that is not lost on him.

Lorca’s smirk stretches out into a wide grin, but his eyes are icy and devoid of any of the affection Tyler had become used to. The ghost speaks, finally, in a drawl that is disconcertingly familiar. “How’re you, Lieutenant?” He edges himself closer to Tyler, and peers down at him with a cold curiosity. Under his gaze, Tyler abruptly feels like a specimen prepped for dissection, and it stirs up ugly memories of blood and pain and carved flesh. Tyler forces himself into an upright position to escape from Lorca’s regard, and the movement causes his cuffs to dig into his wrists. He welcomes the brief pain, and lets it focus him.

He closes his eyes, trying to will away the ghost before him. If he _prays…._

There is a god, only the memory of a memory- but one that still infuses Tyler with a steady warmth. There is a _prayer_ too…the words long lost to him. He aches for them, desperate to speak the name of his god.

His god had a name, and it was glorious and perfect. A name that L’Rell sliced away along with his soul when she tried to undo her gruesome work, and the absence of it throbs in the hollows of his heart. His lips move silently, impotently.

When he opens his eyes, the ghost remains before him. Tyler _knows_ with a fervent faith that transcends flesh and bone that his god could’ve banished this creature as easily as another being might flick a mite of dust off their boot. But what deity would ever deign to help a follower that cannot even _name_ it?

As soon as that thought is free, a flash of hot shame burns through him. The thought of praying to a Klingon god for some kind of salvation…it’s absurd.

“Crisis of conscious?” Lorca asks. For the first time, there’s some mischief reflected in the blue of his eyes- a cold twinkle that prompts a flush of heat in Tyler’s stomach.

“You’re dead,” Tyler tells him flatly, and Lorca gives an exaggerated wince.

“Well, technically speaking, so are you. Ash Tyler is, anyway. Dead and rotting in a Klingon prison somewhere, assuming they didn’t just _jettison_ your remains into the cold vacuum of space.” His smile has taken on a predatory edge, and the twinkle in his eyes has been replaced with something eager and malicious. His voice is as slow and sweet as dripping honey. “Kind of a mind fuck, if you give yourself time to think about it, huh?”

Tyler swallows hard, sucked into the unforgiving blue depths of Lorca’s gaze. It’s a bit like staring down the black void of space itself- there’s nothing reflected back at him except his own reflection. The unwelcome pooling of heat has returned tenfold, and not for the first time Tyler curses his masochistic streak.

Apparently keenly aware of Tyler’s internal struggle, Lorca reaches out to brush his calloused hand against Tyler’s wrist. With a jolt, Tyler realizes he _feels_ the contact- apparently his delusions are impressively sophisticated. Lorca continues the touch, rubbing gentle circles around the places where metal restraints bite against skin.

Lorca blinks slowly, lizard-like, and his smirk takes on a self-satisfied tinge. “Does it make it easier to know you aren’t really Ash Tyler?” he asks him, as quietly and as deadly as a dagger slipped in between ribs. And Lorca’s blade has perfect aim- the question pierces and then twists at Tyler’s heart.

“I am Ash Tyler,” he says uncertainly. “I have his memories. And Voq is gone.” 

Lorca laughs. He’s much more _playful_ in death, or perhaps that’s just the freedom of having the Federation façade finally lifted. Underneath that tightly controlled mask of a Starfleet Captain lurks something sinister and dangerously clever. Lorca eyes him inquisitively, asks “is that a fact?”

Tyler doesn’t answer. There’s a part of him that’s afraid if he does, he’ll sense the hollowness of the lie and no longer be able to convince himself Voq was simply an extended nightmare coaxed from a traumatized imagination. His silence is a sanctuary, the only one he has left.

And another part…another part wonders if he does open his mouth the words that spill out will not belong to him. That he will speak in the guttural, harsh language he sometimes dreams about; that he will finally give a name to the god he worships in his weakest, quietest moments. And that god, no longer nameless, will bless him with the truth L’Rell ripped away from his mind.

His tongue darts around, searching for the missing syllables, the name of the god _so close_ to being realized.

And Lorca is abruptly kissing him- although perhaps that is too soft a word to use to describe the violent way the man forces his lips against Tyler’s and pushes his tongue into his mouth. The part of him that is Ash Tyler, Starfleet protégé, basks in the intimate attentions of the man that once saved his life…and the part of him that _remains himself_ delights in the Klingon-like roughness of Lorca’s mouth against his. The man would’ve been a fierce warrior if he’d been born Klingon, his Terran soul already battle-hardened and possessed of an insatiable appetite for savagery.

He hears a low growl, and belatedly realizes it’s his own. Lorca has pushed him back down against the bed, and his hands move to squeeze at the rapidly growing hardness between Tyler’s legs.

Lorca withdraws from Tyler’s lips to lick and suck and path down his jaw and neck. Tyler gulps for air, and when breath has been returned to him he manages to gasp out, “did you know?”

Lorca pauses in his ministrations, blue eyes suddenly sharp and narrowed. “That you were a Klingon?” With a cruel laugh, he shakes his head. “I’d never have trusted a Klingon to serve beside me, if I’d known.” That remark- drawled out almost as an afterthought- feels like a backhand across the face, but Tyler is more concerned with the fact that it’s also made him achingly hard.

“I do like you though,” Lorca says with a quick smile, fingers teasing against Tyler’s cock eliciting a moan from the other man. “Always have.”

“Michael not enough for you?” Tyler grunts out. “You trying to screw your way through the entirety of the multiverse?”

There is a flash of anger in Lorca’s eyes at the sound of her name, but it’s gone as quickly as it comes. “She’s not enough,” he agrees mildly. “Nobody’s ever _enough_.” He winks. “At least with you, I get a two-for-one.”

Tyler should hate him, and he really tries. But Lorca lowers himself to start sucking against his cock and his world becomes _pleasure_ \- nothing but a heady desire that pushes away everything else.

In Lorca’s mouth, he forgets himself completely, loses himself to the sensations of divine bliss. He doesn’t know Ash Tyler from Voq, doesn’t care to. And in that absence, without the constant struggle between identities, the name of his god seizes him with a devastating power.

And as Lorca pulls him past the edge and swallows him down, the name pulses out along his tongue, riding on the crest of his release.

_**Kahless**._

And then Lorca is gone, and Ash feels very much _himself_ again.


End file.
